Dominic Fox: After Slumber (xiii)
SNEER OF COLD COMMAND I read in Foot’s
rouged Shelley, his upstart-demotic fervour
impacting – time and again – that fist of ice.
The vision is commanding: agitation
as life’s work, as the triumph in slow-motion
of life over its least self; the once-drowned
dried and rekindled, replenishing the earth.
Shelley at full warp’s something else, though lacking
impulse control, careening off the walls
of the launch-tunnel. Not a nick on the unfazed
grimace of Westwell, even so, nor any skin
off Aberavon’s nose. The look of men
who have had others flayed is not the least
perturbed by these excoriating verses.
